The District has cut ties with the firm it hired less than six months ago, at a cost of $50,000 a month, to run the St. Elizabeths East Gateway Pavilion.

D.C.-based Brown & Fried LLC was paid $288,316 to manage the pavilion, which opened in late October to serve the community and the new U.S. Coast Guard headquarters, which is on the St. Elizabeths west campus.

“We initially hired one and we were not pleased with the way it was working for the District of Columbia,” Victor Hoskins, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said recently of Brown & Fried during a D.C. Council oversight hearing. “So we are exiting that relationship.”

Catherine Buell, executive director of St. Elizabeths East, said Brown & Fried was “helpful in getting us up and running the operations and for the initial events.”

But after about six months in operations, she said, as it became clear the pavilion was more popular as a community amenity (fitness classes, food trucks) than as a base of commerce, the District decided to look for “alternative operation strategies.”

Brown & Fried representatives were not available for comment. Its contract was scheduled to run through September.

The pavilion is a 400-foot-long facility featuring a 16,300-square-foot open air market with space for 40 vendors, 3,100 square feet of enclosed civic space, a 21,000-square-foot vegetated green roof and a raised park, which is available for concerts, festivals and other gatherings. It is an interim facility, meant to activate the 180-acre St. E's east campus before and during its multiyear redevelopment.

The Washington City Paper recently reported that two dozen vendors and food trucks were operating at no charge at the pavilion. The $220,000 St. Elizabeths ice slide, meanwhile, had welcomed 3,152 riders between Jan. 11 and Feb. 17 — all for free.

Other items culled from the oversight hearing:

Microsoft, SmartBIM (with partner Treasury Advisory Services) and Citelum US, the three companies that have agreed to anchor the St. Elizabeths east innovation hub, all signed non-binding letters of intent last year, Buell said. Microsoft intends to open an Innovation Center, while Citelum, a French lighting firm, will locate its U.S. operations there and SmartBIM, a conference and learning center.

The redevelopment of St. E’s, to include Microsoft, is at least two years out, as the infrastructure on the campus is largely nonexistent. A request for proposals for the first phase of infrastructure work is expected to be released in the second quarter of 2013. Phase one, including a new road network, will support 2 million square feet of development.

Expect the Wal-Mart-anchored Skyland Town Center to break ground in the “next month or two,” officials said. The Wharf (aka, the Southwest Waterfront) also is looking at a spring groundbreaking and 42-month first phase of construction.

2015 groundbreakings may include Hill East, from Donatelli Development and Blue Skye Development, to include 365 residential units and 20,000 square feet of ground floor retail, and the redevelopment of the McMillan Sand Filtration Plant.